History of the Mawang Empire
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Mawang's founding and the causes leading up to the revolution
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 5 Feb 2017, 19:08.
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3. Names
The Democratic State of Nkurat, 740-915The Democratic State of Nkurat was a triumvirate that eventually became an oligarchy. Militarily very powerful, the country colonized Kré Yobôk, southern Kylyahlyri, and parts of Daatxoi. Through this colonization, Nkurat was able to exploit the others’ resources and use them to gain great wealth. This all happened during the 730’s-780’s.
Soon, industry started becoming more specialized and home industry was common: people partially produced specific items at home and sell them to another household where the production would be taken a step further, and so on until the product was finished and reached the market. In this way, an early form of mass production was invented. The years between 750 and 810 are commonly referred to as the first Commercial Revolution, and because of this, wealth gaps started to increase drastically.
Since Nkurat was founded in 463, penal farms had been common. Starting during the commercial revolution, however, they began to grow and focus on producing cash crops such as rice, coffee, tobacco, and sugar instead of practicing sustainability farming. This switch meant that criminals and slaves became profitable in a way they never had been before. The triumvirate of Nkurat thus began to tighten rules and add ever more restrictions and sub clauses meant to increase the number of law breakers since slavery was so profitable.
This beginning focus on agriculture combined with more revenue and commercial specialization meant that plows started to be improved and mass-produced. Agricultural output this increased, contributing to even more wealth in the hands of privatized prison-owners. The demand for iron ploughs helped to develop the mining industry rapidly. Explosive became common place in clearing shafts and the first steam engine was produce in order to pump water out of the deeper mine shafts. In order to smelt the iron, the government ordered the mass deforestation that would become known as the Forest Clearing Initiative of 809. This order was incredibly unpopular among the rural and lower classes: they depended on the forests for extra hunting grounds, lumber, and medicinal herbs.
Mine owners and workers quickly became much more wealthy than before, causing a racial upset between the dominant Maw class and the minority Kuyak class. Previously, the Kuyaks had primarily worked in the mines and were well-known to be incredibly impoverished. With the advent of mining, though, Kuyaks began to gain prestige and wealth that Maws had felt entitled to. With their growing economic power came growing political power, which the Kuyaks used to influence laws allowing them to bring in more immigrant Kuyaks and keep their religion. Race riots broke out in 816 and again in 820. Before, the government would probably have supported the majority group. Now, though, they supported the Kuyaks since alienating them meant losing control of one of their biggest industries. These riots were violently crushed and led to intense resentment from the Maws.
The first steamboat was produced in 852 and steam-powered trains would follow in 878. Canals began to increase in importance with the famous Great Canal linking the Yue and Moat Lakes dug in 856. The technology was kept incredibly secret and the government restricted education heavily so that no one would be able to recreate the technology and sell it abroad. They kept the rural and lower classes in an enforced state of illiteracy and demanded expensive tuition from every student so that only the rich could afford to be educated.
Despite this, urbanization increased as technology began to improve cloth-weaving techniques, medical techniques and food preparation techniques as well. The mix of people moving from cities to farm cash crops in the countryside and people moving from the countryside to get factory jobs in cities made sure that the two populations stayed relatively balanced.
However, the population began to increase alarmingly in major urban areas starting in the 860’s. Most cities weren’t prepared for this and homelessness and sanitation began to grow as major problems. To fix many cities’ sanitation problems, however, many businesses and factories would have to be torn up and/or moved so that construction workers could get to the old pipes and drains. Said industries refused point blank to relocate or pause. At that point, two of three triumvirate members where themselves factory owners, at least in part, and so the urban sanitation issues were never pursued.
By this point, discontent in society was growing. Anything from speaking badly of the government to reading blueprints for steam engines could get one exiled to a penal-farm. In penal-farms, prisoners were expected to work from sunrise until sunset with one short break for lunch. If they didn’t harvest or plant enough to please their overseer, they were beaten brutally. Rape, murder, and starvation were common stories from those who had escaped. People spoke of penal-farms in hushed voices while glancing around to make sure no one else would hear.
The government espoused the idea that humans were inherently good and so everything they did must be correct, as humans could do no wrong. This was the ideology allowed to be printed in the propaganda-filled newspapers that littered the streets. Anything even slightly subversive was illegal. Things were only illegal for the poor, though. Bribery was an accepted and regular part of daily life. In fact, it was generally seen as the only way to earn a promotion.
Taxes were brutal and only required to be paid from rural households and those who didn’t own or run businesses. Worker’s unions were illegal and workers were expected to work a minimum of 12 hours per day. Children worked from the time they could walk and talk. Military service was also only required if you were poor. The wealthy were allowed to buy their way out of service, though they regularly served as commanders and leaders.
The end of Nkurat, 916-935
From 846 to 915, Turia Kuande worked as a teacher and held illegal study sessions in her home weekly. With her students’ encouragement, she wrote a book on her beliefs which was soon to become the most popular and well-read book in the country. Indeed, she would later be hailed as the Mother of the People’s Revolution.
Contrary to the government’s popular ideology that humans could do no wrong, Kuande wrote that humans were naturally ignorant. They sought goodness and morality but left to their own devices would only cause trouble and confusion and strife. Humans, Kuande believed, require education and help to become moral and good. Naturally, humans are greedy, and Kuande argued that a country needed extensive laws and regulations to keep people in check.
This philosophy was extremely popular among the lower classes, who loathed the wealthy’s autocratic hold on money and power. After her death, her fame grew and her book was banned by the government. Despite this, many illegal copies were printed and her followers took on the name The Kuandenn.
Disease strikes through the nonexistent sanitation systems and it spreads rapidly. The White Plague, characterized by vitiligo (which gives it its name), a high fever, intense joint pain, and septicemia, leading to sepsis and then death within a week to two of contracting the sickness. Around 2.3 million people out of a 42,000,000-person population die from the plague, and about 76% of the victims are lower class. The total was even higher in big cities. So many were sick and dying that it brought the economy almost to a stand still and within a year, there was an economic crisis. There weren’t enough peasants to harvest the crops and so for two years in a row, food prices skyrocketed.
The Kuandenn, by this time a formidable group, petitioned the government to fix cities’ plumbing and sanitation by marching a group of sick industrial workers all the way to the capital and having them surround the triumvirate’s palace and refusing to leave until their demands were met. This is popularly known as the March of the Dead.
The resulting construction was required to tear up much of the city and ruin the few factories that were still operating. But instead of using money from the wealthy class to do the repairs, they increased the taxes on everyone, which made everyone mad. The lower class felt it already payed more than its fair share of taxes and the wealthy were outraged that they were expected to pay for a project that didn’t care about.
The plague began in 932 and by 935, it was still going, though its numbers were tapering off. In 1933, Kylyahlyri stormed the provinces of Kengop and Ssoyi, frighteningly close to the capital city. They conscripted all the lower class and peasants that they could, even dragging prisoners of the penal-farms to fight, but because of the plague, they kept dying and there were no replacements to be found. Desperately, the government decided to start conscripting the upper classes, but this produced horrific backlash. The upper classes were enraged that they were expected to fight alongside peasants and sick factory workers instead of leading them from afar. Unsurprisingly, Nkurat lost the war. It could have been worse, though- Kylyahlyri troops quickly pulled out in 1935 when a third of their army had been decimated by the White Plague. The only reason that Nkurat survived the war at all was because Daatxoian troops invaded the southernmost provinces in order to fight off Kylya troops for fear that they’d come after Daatxoi next. As payment for this ‘favor’, Daatxoi demanded reparations from the Nkurat government and used all the reparations to fund Kuandenn rebels. It is important to note that the Kuandenn had already been growing rapidly during the war as they were joined by disaffected soldiers and sailors who had become more radical after seeing first hand the intense corruption in the Nkurat military.
As if all of this wasn’t bad enough, the end of the war led to the Great Famine of 935-939. This was the last straw that led to the People’s Revolution.
The People’s Revolution, 936-939
The March for Rice took place on December 8, 936. This marked the beginning of the revolution. Led by Kore Tesami, leader of the Kuandenn, a group of 9,000 people, mainly women and escaped prisoners, marched to the capital once again. Instead of making it all the way to the capital, though, they stopped at a grain storehouse and found that it was full, despite so little rice being available on the market. Sources differ in why they stopped here and who told them whose storehouse it was- Mawang propaganda would have us believe that it was a peaceful march, but some evidence exists toward the contrary. Regardless, it came to be known by the marchers that the head of Yue province, also an owner of three local penal-farms, was stockpiling rice and selling it at exorbitant prices on the market. The marchers broke rank, looted the storehouse and then stormed his mansion. He and his entire family were murdered and his house set up in flames. Word quickly spread and it just so happened that there was a rebellion against penal-farm owners going on at the same time in the neighboring province of Uteok. With new reason to fight, rebellion spread quickly throughout the country.
The date the Mawang Empire gives for its founding is April 3, 936. This is the day when Kore Tesami supposedly killed two of the three triumvirate members and the third fled. Tesami declared a socialist empire based on the ideal of ‘Kuande Thought’. However, the revolution wasn’t finished. While the wealthy had passively watched the Nkurat government fall, they had strengthened their own ranks and bought off much of the remaining military. The next four years would be a gruesome civil war, the likes of which had not yet been seen on such a large scale.
During the civil war, also known as the War for the People’s Empire, the economy ground to a halt. Prisoners held on penal-farms either rose up and killed their masters or they were freed from without by the Kuandenn. Tesami himself made this his main goal in the first years, as he had been born and raised on a penal-farm, having escaped when he was 13 with the help of his mother.
An added tension during this time was the racial tension between the majority Maw ethnicity and the minority Kuyaks who had risen so fast to become factory owners and politicians. A large scale genocide took place from 935-942 and the Kuyaks were almost entirely killed. Many fled in the early years to Kylyahlyri. A largely unknown fact is that, in addition to the financing that Daatxoi provided the Kuandenn, they also made a pact with Tesami whereby they refused any and all Kuyaks with the promise that after the war they would be given the province of Tatue as a gift. Indeed, Tatue was ceded to Daatxoi in 943.
The Beginnings of the Mawang Empire, 940-945
The civil war was officially won in 939, which is when Tesami was elected by the top members of the Kuandenn as emperor (later when there was an international push for democracy, the title would be changed to president). His first moves as leader were to encourage the Kuyak Genocide, change the country’s name from Nkurat to Mawang, finish fixing Mawang’s city sanitation problems, fund more health clinics, and start setting up provincial schools and universities. Another major goal was to redo the writing system, which for hundreds of years had been logographic, requiring years and years of study to require even basic competency. In 947, Tesami’s advisors would produce and put into practice a new, alphabetic script with the goal of spreading literacy and education, as Kuande Thought required.
Many old patriarchal laws were also overturned in honor of the Mother of the Revolution, Turia Kuande, and a push for feminism and egalitarianism was at its height. ‘Kuande Thought’ became the official state ideology and began being taught in all schools- private schools were outlawed as capitalist inequality. In his first speech, Tesami declared that “the country would no longer be ruled by wealthy scum growing rich off of the backs of the lower class, but would be an egalitarian society where the government and people were unified and the government cares for its people and provides basic rights and services.” He also declared that his gaol was to have free, country-wide primary education and healthcare, as well as orphanages and local government bodies where the people could be heard regardless of their status or level of wealth.
Daatxoian educators and politicians were invited to join the Kuandenn temporarily to help straighten out the wrecked economy and switch the country over to socialism. The Kuyak Genocide continued under the term ‘the Return to Your Roots Program’, whereby civilians were encouraged to drive out any non-ethnic Maws and tear down any ‘symbols of capitalist decadence’ that were now a part of the ‘old regime’.
Thus, by the year 945, the Mawang Empire had been founded and the worst years were over. From then on, they would grow into a socialist, one-party country known for its militarism, unity, ecological awareness, and egalitarianism (as long as you’re the right ethnicity).
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